(ROGUE ONE SPOILERS)

***MASSIVE ROGUE ONE SPOILERS AHEAD***

***DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO STAY SPOILER-FREE***

***IMAGINE THOSE SIRENS FROM THE TRAILER PLAYING***

***GO NOW***

(also, title from Virgil's Aeneid)

a thousand shapes of death

When Cassian, reaching for a handgrip in a breathless pause in the rush of war, asks if they are afraid to die, he is the only one who can truthfully say "no."

-

K-2SO cannot die, not exactly. Nor can he be afraid. But there is a possibility, on this journey into the jaws of death, that something will happen to him, something from which he cannot return. That he will become--a mangled hunk of metal, a few garbled lines of code. Or a nonentity, as he was in the Empire. K-2SO is not sure if any part of him, the strange creature Cassian Andor and his Rebellion made him, will endure.

And if every cog and gear and piece of circuitry in him strains against the undefinable thing that blackens the horizon, perhaps it is easier to simply say he is afraid to die. 

-

There was a time, long ago in forgotten memory, when Bodhi was foolish and brave enough to laugh in death's face. 

Flying is just that, isn't it? Cheating death with every turn, a kind of controlled freefall, coming down swiftly onto ground that will not hold your bones, at least not this day.

And in the Empire, pilots aren't supposed to fear, not even cargo pilots. Save the ship, of course, if you can--but if not, don't even try to save yourself. Go out all guns blazing, with the Empire's name on your lips, and never let the Rebellion catch even a drop of your blood. 

Ever since the first time he flew for the Empire, Bodhi has been unable to fly without fear. He doesn't want to die in the clutches of some cold, alien thing, to asphyxiate in perfect stillness once the first breath of space hits his lungs. He doesn't want his family to find out in a stock message from a man in a black suit, or a white one, who answers to another man in a suit that is either black or white or grey, up and up and up, and every man in that vast pyramid with the blood of children slipping over his gloves.

Even now Bodhi is shaking and terrified, but the ship sings softly under his hands, and he thinks about what Cassian told him about death in the stolen quiet as they loaded crates into the hold.

He is not dying in the service of the Empire. In some sense, then, he is getting what he wants.

-

Chirrut is not afraid--no, not of death itself. But he is afraid of what Baze will do, should the Force take him first. 

"So you are his eyes," people have said countless times, looking at Baze, not Chirrut, with well-intentioned condescension, and Baze has always snorted and answered, "What does he need me for? He's got his own." And neither has ever acknowledged the silent understanding that Chirrut is Baze's eyes too, in a deeper and more dangerous world than this one.

Chirrut believes Baze has always stayed true, hiding it behind grime and realism, but there is no way of knowing past all doubt, and so he cannot go in absolute peace. Without him, will Baze wander, like a ship in a great ocean that has lost its guiding star? How can he die, without the certainty that Baze will meet him somewhere in the beyond? 

No attachment, Chirrut knows too well, is the Jedi way. But he is no Jedi. And losing Baze at the point of no return is the thing he fears most of all, in both this world and the other. 

He can feel Baze's presence next to him, warm and rock-solid and so temporal. Chirrut's knuckles whiten around the hilt of his staff.

-

Baze wants to die first.

Take me first, take me first, take me first--as the ship moves, the thought is rattling around in the back of his mind, and he cannot make it go away.

Chirrut is not afraid to die, Baze knows, but that is silly, that is imbecilic, Chirrut should live, live past the war, live until the Empire is felled and the Jedi rise again, live long enough to roll a kyber crystal again in the palm of his hand, and Baze is ready to die first if it means he will not have to live one minute that Chirrut does not. Perhaps it is selfish. Perhaps it is selfless. Whatever it is, Baze only knows that he does not want to be there to see the Force-blue fade from Chirrut's eyes.

Take me first take me first take me first--

Baze is not afraid, no, not of death itself. He is afraid to die last. There is a difference. 

-

Cassian's question seems almost rhetorical, and no one in the hold answers; the silence is answer enough. 

If Jyn had answered, she would have said no, but she realises now, in a realisation that is somehow both sudden and slow, that that is untrue.

She has met death many times before. Her mother died, young and bloodless, on a blinding day as impassive cliffs looked on. Her father died an old man, swallowed by the night and the wailing rain. And in between, Jyn has seen death in its myriad shapes and forms, felling friends and teachers and comrades, all without mercy.

Somehow, she has evaded it at every turn. She realises now that she is not ready to let it beat her, not yet. And so she realises that she is afraid.

-

Cassian wears death under his eyes and etched into his hands. He has been ready to die since he was six years old. He only asks to be spared the pain.

---

K-2SO has the casing of an Imperial droid, but that alone will not save him.

Like him, the stormtroopers that pour into the room bear the mark of the Empire. Like him, they can be reprogrammed. But that is a hypothetical against a certainty, and K-2SO has made all these calculations before, so he shoots, both to save the galaxy and to save Cassian, for whom he has the closest thing a droid can have to love.

Every gunshot is a declaration: I exist I exist I exist; I am not an Imperial droid and not a human but I am something; and I am making a choice; and there are things greater than death.

He exists, and every shot he fires is proof of that, and every shot fired back is a voice saying otherwise, and somewhere amidst that huge and terrifying debate about his existence, K-2SO is lost.

Bodhi dies on the wrong side of the sky and the right side of the war.

As he lies there shaking, cheek bloodying the ground, he strains to look up and remembers what Cassian told him about death: 

at least in the Rebellion, someone might remember your name.

The Force lets Chirrut live as long as he is needed, long enough to flip the switch, and then it takes him, swift and sharp as an arrow. He slips soundlessly into the deep, deep blue. The minutes between one death and another are the longest Baze has ever known.

The wave comes for Jyn, and she tells her old enemy no, not yet, until she realises it is giving her the dignity of a painless death.

The golden light reaches to swallow them whole. Cassian closes his eyes.

Author's Notes (ramble warning)

1. This fic actually gave me a fair bit of trouble as it talks so much about death, and death in the Star Wars universe is different from death in our universe, because the spiritual world of Star Wars is fundamentally different from our spiritual world. So remember that, folks, and keep your heads on straight.

2. Rogue One also made it rather difficult to write fic for it that happens after the movie, and I'm a bit hazy on the details of the film's timeline, so if I just keep writing the death scenes over and over again...don't blame me.

3. Peace out.

a cold and empty sky

Kubo takes Grandfather back home.

The cave is dusty and ill-kept, and the floor needs sweeping. He gets the broom out of the back and sweeps for several minutes before noticing Grandfather still standing amicably at the entrance, sharp against the setting sun.

Oh.

"Um," he says, scrambling to pull out a straw mat and, after some hesitation, laying it down on the least messy part of the floor. "Please sit, Grandfather."

The old man folds his legs under him like a child, and sits facing the entrance, staring out at the sunset. Kubo thinks he sees a tear, clear and jewel-like, in the single eye.

"Okay," Kubo says, more to himself than anyone else, "okay," and busies himself with making dinner.

There're a few handfuls of rice left in the bottom of the pot, so he cooks one, scooping the grains out into the bowls that used to belong to him and Mother. He lays out the chopsticks, each shoulder to shoulder with its partner. He calls Grandfather over to eat.

He takes Mother's place and lets Grandfather sit where he used to. Some things he can't share, at least not yet.

Grandfather may sit like a child, all tiny and curled over, but he doesn't eat like one; he takes the rice in small and dignified bites, almost grain by grain. He's quiet, waiting for his grandson to speak first, but Kubo stays silent. And he keeps turning his head to look at the sky. Kubo watches him and thinks about everything he doesn't understand.

When night falls, soft as a blanket, Kubo has no choice but to give Grandfather Mother's sleeping mat. His own is much too small and making the old man use it would be disrespectful. So he rolls it out and tries not to think about the scent of Mother's hair being swallowed by the steel that seems to cling to his grandfather's skin. Grandfather turns over so his back is to Kubo, gives one long, heavy sigh that shudders through his entire body, and then is still.

Kubo's fingers steal towards his eyepatch. The skin there has started to itch, and he can't seem to reconcile this doddering old man with the vengeful spirit of the Moon King. He recalls how much Grandfather's fingers crabbed around the chopsticks resembled claws, and tries not to think about them, bent, grasping, snatching his other eye out--

He gasps and ducks under his blanket. If he could sleep with his one eye open, he would.

Kubo is woken in the middle of the night by the rasped whisper of his name from near the entrance of the cave.

His first thought is Mother, because of course night is when Mother is most alive, singing her songs, telling her stories, staving off the daybreak, but then Mother would never say his name like that, as if he is something distant and unknowable. When he realizes who it is everything seems to tumble down around him once again.

Carrying some kind of strange and barbed longing in his heart, he creeps toward the hunched figure, who has thrown off his blankets, and is still staring, vacantly, out into the night. "What is it, Grandfather?"

Something seems wrong, at this moment, in this darkness, but he can't tell precisely what it is--night for him has always only been firelight, and Mother, and the small and complete world of home. (He realizes, with a start, that he can go out there now, that the night is safe for him, and that Mother isn't there to show him what it is. Perhaps that is what is wrong.)

Grandfather stretches out a finger, cracked like a talon, towards the sky. "It's gone," he says, stunned, quiet. "Where has it gone?"

Kubo follows his gaze, and at first he doesn't quite realize, because he doesn't know the night sky--it's more unfamiliar to him than the deep forest, or the terrible intricacies of the human heart.

"Gone," Grandfather says again, and then--

Oh. Oh.

"Of course," Kubo says, under his breath, understanding, "the Moon King." The night is very dark.

"What?"

Kubo wishes Grandfather would stop speaking to him like that, so afraid to touch him, so afraid to exist.

"Nothing," he says, and settles next to his grandfather, beneath a cold and empty sky.

happy birthday to you

"You don't know when your birthday is?"

Poe is perched on a crate of rations, watching Rey and Finn get some forms properly filled in. It's already been somewhat of a disturbing experience, even with the administrator tactfully skipping over last names--Rey only reluctantly put down Jakku as her home planet, and Finn has been shuttled to and fro too many times to name just one. 

Rey shakes her head with both defiance and embarrassment. Of course she doesn't know her birthday. She doesn't even know her own family. Poe supposes he shouldn't be surprised.

"And you?" Poe turns to Finn.

He shrugs. "The First Order never kept track. It's easy to figure out your age if you have the right technology, though. I'm twenty-three. You can put that down."

The administrator does so, dutifully.

"I'm nineteen," Rey chimes in. "At least, I think so."

You think so? "That means you've never had a birthday party, either."

Again Rey and Finn exchange slightly confused glances."...No?" Rey ventures. 

"Sort of," Finn qualifies, remembering all the new duties the First Order added with every year you grew.

"Okay." Poe holds up his hands and shakes his head. "Do you want a birthday?"

"What's so important about a birthday?"

This stumps Poe for a second, because it's always seemed so natural, birthdays in the Dameron home, in the Resistance. "It's like a day...to celebrate...being you. Your existence. You know? People sing songs and have fun. They give you presents, too. Mine is in a few days, and I think Jessika is plotting something."

The General walks past, busy as always, but catching a snatch of their conversation. She pauses to look fondly at the bright faces of the boy who broke his training to join her battle and the girl who brought her brother home. "I think the two of you are cause for celebration," she says, before moving on.

"See," says Poe. "The General thinks you should have birthdays, too. Just pick a date that you like. The day you met the Resistance, maybe?" No, he thinks, a second too late. That's mixed with too many bad memories.

Rey and Finn both scrunch up their faces and think. It takes a long time. Too many dates have bad memories tied to them, Poe guesses, dismayed.

"Maybe," Rey finally says, "we can have yours?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Poe jumps off the crates with a kind of eager desperation. "Sure. You can have mine. We can all have the same birthday. That'd be nice. You can put that down," he adds, to the longsuffering administrator.

He leaves the three of them to complete the paperwork and covers the base to make sure at least ninety percent of them remember to wish Rey and Finn a happy birthday--because if there's anything Poe Dameron is good at, it's rallying the troops.

-

Poe has big plans for the big day. There's only one small problem.

If there's anything Poe Dameron is good at, it's not baking.

Jessika comes in, her hands sticky with paint from hanging up a birthday banner, takes one look at the cake, and bursts out laughing. 

"What's so funny? It's not--it's not that--okay, come on, you're getting paint everywhere."

His friend stops laughing long enough to gasp out, "That's the worst cake...I've ever seen."

Poe frowns at it. It does look sort of terrible, lopsided and charred on one side, the iced words a barely intelligible scrawl. "I don't have time to bake another. Maybe I can add some sprinkles."

"Poe, no amount of sprinkles can possibly save that cake."

With a sigh, Poe deposits the cake on the far end of the counter. "Okay, let me see that banner."

Cheerfully, Jessika unfurls it. "Happy Birthday to Rey and Finn and Poe," it reads. The "Poe" is very small, the letters all squished together. At his squint Jessika shrugs. "I ran out of room."

She did it on purpose to rag him, but Poe can hear Rey and Finn's voices in the hall, so he waves mutely for her to hang it up. It turns out Resistance pilots are laughably bad at all sorts of arts and crafts, because the banner sags threateningly and falls down on them both, and when they finally disentangle themselves the birthday kids are already peering at the cake.

"It says 'Rey and Finn,'" Finn observes, puzzled.

Rey has gone ahead and taken a mouthful, even as the two banner-swathed pilots fling out both hands to stop her. "Rey, stop, that's the junkiest cake ever," Jessika says, but Rey's eyes light up.

"What is this?" she asks with her mouth full.

"Cake," Poe answers helplessly.

"Cake?" Finn stares down at the chunk Rey has handed him, and tentatively puts it into his mouth. "Maybe I've heard of it. It's sort of like bread, but better."

"It's the best cake I've ever had," Rey says breathlessly.

"I've never had cake."

"Neither have I," Rey admits, and then before anyone can get in her way she's running off with a slice for the General, too.

General Organa returns with a napkin, crumbly cake, and a perplexed expression, while Rey bounds in front of her in a state of great excitement. Her eyes roam the room until they land on Poe. "Who taught you to bake, Dameron?" she demands, but she looks like she's trying not to laugh.

For a second Poe stares at his boots. "No disrespect meant, ma'am, but...you did."

Oh, that brings back memories. For a moment Leia is lost in a scrambled recollection of two little boys licking batter out of the pan, and, even further back, two other wild boys, one dark and one fair, presenting her with a cake they cobbled together from Rebellion rations. (It was completely unpalatable, but they ate it anyway, stealing whatever joy they could from under the hands of their oppressors.)

She snaps herself back to the present. Rey gives Poe such a brilliant smile that he'll carry the memory of it for a dozen birthdays to come. He figures if she's grinning at him like that, the cake can't be that bad.

So he tries it, scooping a bite up with a fork, and then makes a disgusted face, because it is. 

But the laughter is sweet, anyway.

kylo ren's guide to pleasing your master

I.

Step One.

Don't.

Don't cry when Luke Skywalker comes to take you away.

Don't sulk and refuse to talk to the other children when you arrive.

Don't demand to see your parents fifteen times instead of listening.

Don't drop the stick. You're supposed to pretend it's a lightsaber. (You aren't trying very hard.)

Don't hit your friends with the stick when they look at you funny.

Don't slouch and droop when it's time for inspection. Draw yourself up tall, smile proudly, and look Luke Skywalker straight in the eye. (You are a Jedi. At least try to look the part.)

Don't call him a "tyrant" who "doesn't know anything."

Don't. (Ignore the voice, dark and sonorous, in your head.)

Don't be yourself.

-

Step Two.

Being a Jedi is hard.

Please try to clean up after yourself.

Please try not to leave your master's students smashed and scattered in the snow.

(You are tracking the blood in.)


II.

Yes, you can.

Of course you can.

You can make a mess if you want. We have thousands of troops who can clean it up.

You can rage in your room. No one will hear you.

You can even destroy the furniture. No need to worry about the cost. No need to worry about Hux's complaining. It's all part of the process. You will learn in time.

You can slam the stormtrooper who disobeyed you into the wall. Listen to his groans. (Darth Vader would have been proud.)

You can kill him, if you want.

You can land on that planet, draw your rusty red lightsaber, decimate the population, bare your teeth, grow stronger on their blood. (Somebody can take care of the mess. Move on to the next planet. And the next)

Yes, you can, you can, you can do it all.

Please.

Go ahead.

-

(You've forgotten a lot, haven't you, Ben?

Luke Skywalker's face when he came for you and you cried like you would never stop? He turned away for a moment and when he turned back he was trying to smile. Don't knock it till you try it, Ben. I promise you'll see them again.

He was proud of you, for all your griping. The first time your parents visited one would have thought he was the child, bursting with the need to please.

Your parents didn't want to let you go, but they had to. When's the last time you did something because you had to? They thought Luke could keep you safe. Your mother wept afterwards. Your father walked out to the cliffs because he needed to be alone. Didn't you feel it?

Don't you remember when Henutl, the welt of your pretend lightsaber still emblazoned across his face, challenged you for another round? Again, Ben, he said, and then shared his biscuits with you afterwards.

Remember when Luke Skywalker was a tyrant? 

You certainly have forgotten a lot.)

-

Snoke wants the pilot. Get him the pilot.

Snoke wants the droid. Get him the droid.

He wants your father. No, no-- Get him your father. 

(Be careful, father. Stay away from the sides of cliffs.)

-

Snoke wants the girl.

Here is how to please your master:

Step One. 

Find the girl.

When your father falls, somebody screams.

There she is. 

Step Two.

Fight the girl.

You should not find the fight difficult. She has no training, no master, no teacher. (She probably needs one.) Pound on your wounds, grit your teeth, plow through the stormtrooper who stands in your way, and fight the girl.

Step Three.

Lose.

(You've really done it this time, haven't you, Ben?)

Let yourself bleed out in the snow.

Let him stitch you back together again. However he wants.

Taste the freedom, raw and red and good, in your mouth. (Ignore the voice, brilliant and deafening, in your head.)

Please.

across the stars

"Come with me," he says, holding a promise in his eyes, of a life filled with something other than loneliness and fear and anguish.

And Rey wants to, so very much. She wants to take his hand and follow him to where the First Order can't reach them and see that promise fulfilled. No one has ever asked her anywhere with such desperate kindness. No one has ever given her a choice.

But that's it, isn't it? She doesn't have a choice. Han and Chewie and the Falcon are pulling her one way, and beyond that is the greater pull of the Resistance, and beyond that still is a cry too large and deep for her to understand. Of all these strings pulling at her, Finn's is the weakest. 

Yet, something in her whispers yes, all the other voices shout no, and Rey cannot say one or the other. Finally she says don't go instead, putting everything she has into the words.

Finn bows his head, and she can see that he, like her, truly believes he has no choice. She can almost sense him, with bitter resignation, cut the string from her heart to his. But not before he asks one last thing of her. "Take care of yourself. Please."

And just like that, she is turning away to hide her tears, and he is gone.

-

The Resistance does defeat Starkiller, but it's a narrower shave than anyone is happy with. 

Before Han walks out on that bridge he slips her the lightsaber. She doesn't want it, it still sends shockwaves through her whenever she touches it, but then he falls, and for some unknown reason that sends larger shockwaves throughout the terrible power she has learnt to call the Force.

Rey gets away from Kylo Ren, leaves him bleeding in the snow, but the hilt of her lightsaber still stings her palm, and his blade has cut a furious red line down her right arm.

Too many Resistance pilots lose their lives that day.

Too many homeworlds are burnt to ashes before their inhabitants find the time to scream.

When they return to D'Qar, there is too little reason to celebrate.

Everything is happening as it should, the Force tells Rey.

No, something is wrong, she says, but not to its face.

-

Rey is part of the Resistance, one of the Jedi, exactly where she should be, among air and green and water and people who are bright and good. She meets the General, a princess old and fire-tested, and finds home in her strong arms. She meets her Master, a grey man whose golden boyhood is buried deep, and finds purpose in his quiet voice. She meets BB-8's owner, the swarthy pilot named Poe who destroyed Starkiller to the roar of "as long as there's light, there's hope" in his head, and finds friendship in his broad smile.

She can't help but remember that before she found belonging in these three pairs of eyes, there was another, melting and scared and kind.

(Maybe she could have chosen to go with Finn. But she would have chosen wrong. If it was his lot to run, it is hers to stay. Always has been.)

"He still has your jacket," she tells Poe one day.


"There isn't a better person to wear it anywhere in the galaxy." Poe says it with an easy acceptance Rey would give anything to inhabit. When she admits she is unhappy, disappointed that Finn fled, Poe shakes his head gently.

"Others have always made his decisions for him." Her friend looks up at the stars, and she follows his gaze, trying to imagine Finn somewhere among them, free and safe and happy. "This is his choice."

-

Rey didn't think anything could hurt as much as those dry interminable years, waiting for the family who had abandoned her. 

It turns out fresher cuts take a longer time to heal. 

Years and years with the Resistance, and she still wakes up sometimes with a Finn-shaped hole in her chest. Eventually it scabs around the edges, and she stops turning around in the Falcon asking, "Finn, did you see that?" to see only sweet Chewie looking sympathetically back at her, stops sitting in her bunk and thinking about what if, what if until she has to open the window for air.

Everything is as it should be, the Force says again.

This time, she doesn't disagree.

-

When she brings Kylo Ren to the Resistance Base personally, Rey is no longer a girl. She can't decide if this gives her the strength to watch, or only makes the pain more acute, when he screams for his mother, and when Leia Organa clamps her lips together and stills her tears, because she can either be a perfect leader or a perfect mother, not both.

When the First Order is wiped from existence, Rey watches the Republic rebuild itself, again. It wisely refrains from calling itself "New New Republic," and drops qualifiers altogether, as though it has always existed, old as the Force. By this time Kylo Ren has screamed himself out, and is a powerful ally, though an uneasy one. Rey never quite stops watching her back even when he fights by her side.

When she buries her General and her Master, who die together as they were born, Rey feels terribly tired and terribly old. She has no space for Poe's wild-eyed grief or Chewbacca's howls, but only wishes she had Han's body to bury with them. The Force swells to encompass its treasured twins. The empty holes in her chest grow bigger and bigger.

-

Rey lives long and rich and full. It is a life of hardship, but also of happiness, scavenged snatches of luminous joy between the pain. She has a special place for her memories, the people she has lost, so that they don't keep her awake at night. Somewhere deep in there the thought of Finn lies buried.

She digs it out once in a while. Allows herself a single what if.

In between the what ifs she has seen the Republic grow like a masterless child, seen freedom rise and fall countless times, and become grey-haired and fire-strengthened herself. She has kept herself alive, and saved countless others. And I am too old to be chasing rumours, she thinks, as she flies towards an anonymous Outer Rim planet. But there is a man there, the locals say, who knows the Force, who saved a million lives in the Battle of Chanslook, and thousands more after, and then tried to disappear.

("He saved the stormtroopers, too?" she asked, and they nodded, the strangeness of it familiar to them.)

As she lands, the Force sings out, filling her head with its fierce, urgent delight. Her lightsaber hilt humming in her hand, she turns a corner, and suddenly there's a pair of eyes there that feels like home.

One of them is milky, almost filmed over. But the other is still warm and bright and kind, and she would know it anywhere.

I thought it might be you.

She says his name, and he says hers, soft and simultaneous as rain soaking desert-dry ground.

Sixty years too late and just in time, a girl and a boy are in each other's arms, and their hearts are too close together to need a string between them.

fine feathers

The early sun peeks through the slats at the window, and the girl considers her wardrobe.

She surveys the rows of dresses, the thick velvets and voluminous silks. She glances across the lines of dainty, decorative shoes. She even takes into account the trays and trays of jewellery before making her selection. It takes the combined efforts of both her and her single handmaiden to get her into the gown, burdened as it is with a fitted bodice and silver needlepoint and jewels, and the second its padded shoulders settle in place she can feel their weight bearing down on her.

Padme forces herself to straighten, breathes all the way down to her stomach, and gives Eila a brave smile. As heavy as the gown is, she can already feel it bracing her, transforming her, reminding her that she is no longer the girl struck with awe at the capital city of Naboo, she is a senator who barters with planets.

In the slanting sun, Eila does Padme's hair, smoothing in veda pearls that catch the rays in sudden bursts. She does her makeup; the Senator fastens her own jewellery, today a band of black and white around the throat. Then the handmaiden pulls over a full-length mirror so Padme can make a final inspection.

The transformation, Padme can see, is complete. Eila has completely hidden the circles under her eyes and the dryness in her skin bred by long hours and sleepless nights. The gown, dark, full, and sculptural, emphasizes her, making her presence commanding, full of power and ethos. Padme, the tired young woman carrying a burden too heavy for her, is gone, and Senator Amidala, the beautiful and intelligent champion of democracy whom Padme hopes to really be someday, stands in her place. 

(Deep in the recesses of her wardrobe Padme still keeps a gown from when she was Queen. The rest are gone--made into simpler dresses, cut up to be resold, or given to charities--because she could not in her new position justify owning such opulence. But she keeps one. It reminds her that the people chose her, and the people loved her, and that, by all accounts, they still do.)

The sun is rising higher as Padme travels to the Senate, her long train creating a wake behind her, like the waves of change she leaves in the sky.

-

The sun is beginning to sink when the girl considers her wardrobe.

She has to force herself not to slump, not to let the sweat and dirt and blood all over the sheets or fall asleep right there and then. Instead she opens the large metal trunk she stores her clothes in and eyes them dubiously, rooting through the pants, the vests, the white dresses and silver jewellery stark against the browns and greens. She has nothing coordinated or particularly suitable for an emergency meeting in lieu of dinner--laundry can be slow on an overtaxed Rebellion base--but she sighs, hits the shower, and throws on a shirt and pants that vaguely match.

Leia could try to scrape up something to eat in the five minutes she has left, but instead she gives herself time to braid her hair, coiling the finished braid around her head and pinning it in place. The routine forces her to slow down, soothes her, stills her nerves. Her mother used to braid her hair, sometimes to keep her quiet, sometimes for a special occasion. In the familiar action Leia can still feel her mother's hands.

She ducks into her bunk to look into the small mirror kept there. Her face looks very small and pale and tired against the shadows filling the room, but Leia lifts her chin and sets her jaw, hard. She has seen her father do this before he leaves for the Senate. She has seen her mother do this before she makes difficult decisions. The mask hides the frightened girl who has lost her home planet and turns her into the lion-hearted leader of the Rebellion. One day Leia hopes to be able to drop the mask and lead regardless, but for now, it has to do.

(Leia still keeps the few gowns, silver-white and shining, she has left. True, they do not belong in this age of war and tears, but before she was a rebel she was a Princess. The time may come when she has to be a princess again, free and clean and beautiful. She does quite not realize her men love her the better for dressing like them.)

The sun has nearly set when Leia marches out to the Rebellion, the sound of her boots loud and certain against the tiles, like the shakers of entire worlds.

-

The night is breathing its last, gusting over the sands, and the girl considers her wardrobe.

One of the lenses from her goggles has fallen out, and just poking it back in isn't going to work; she's tried. Which means she's going to have to find some glue, which means she's going to have to buy it, which means she's going to go hungry again--but no one in their right mind would try to scavenge without goggles. And her belt has once again become too loose. That she can fix now, so she stitches it tighter with a big needle and a scrap of rawhide thread. Sitting upright, she rocks her hammock with one foot on the sandy ground, listening to the soft animal sounds of the desert.

The task finished, Rey lets out a frustrated little sigh, stretching out to full length. Her empty stomach makes sleep impossible. Absently, she winds and rewinds her gauzy arm bindings and scatters the loose sand. Soon the sun will rise, and she will set out again to the junkyards of Jakku, hopefully to find enough scrap to buy her dinner and glue. She jumps up at the first sign, the barely perceptible rose glow on the horizon, grabbing her quarterstaff as she goes. Before she steps out of the shadow of her walker, she draws herself up to her full height, grips her quarterstaff a little tighter, makes herself seem like a difficult target so that any lowlifes looking for an easy victim will decide she isn't worth it. 

(Rey gathers her hair every morning into three little knots at the back of her neck. It's extra trouble, and time is food on Jakku, but she has to allow herself the indulgence. There is someone out there who will remember her real name, her past, her family. In the meantime this is all she has to remember, and she will keep doing her hair so, because someone who loved her once did it for her.)

The sun is gaining strength when Rey sets off to the scavenge, and she leaves footprints in the sand, like the path she will trace out in the stars.

Where's Rey?

"What is he saying?"

The faces come into focus one by one. First a woman he doesn't recognise, wearing the uniform of medical staff. Then the ruddy face of Poe, tinged with an anxiety bizarre on him. And finally that of the General. Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance, is looking at him with a mother's anxiety, but her face is well acquainted with the expression, falling easily into thin, worn lines.

Staring up at them, Finn tries to speak around the dryness in his throat, forcing his lips to form around the words. "Where's Rey?"

The three exchange glances. General Organa's expression is unreadable.

"She isn't here right now. I'll tell you later. For now, you should get some more rest." 

Discreetly, she ushers Poe out of the room and follows, her small shoulders still strong, poised from a lifetime of fighting. Finn wants to protest--he feels like he's slept for a week already, and maybe he has--but starts to cough violently instead.

The medic holds a cup to his lips. He's expecting water, or something beige and chalky like the all-purpose medicine the First Order used to give him, but instead the liquid is a sunshiny orange, and smooth and sweet, and that makes him oddly happy. Rey would love this, Finn thinks, and then thinks once again that unanswered, unsettling question: where's Rey?

-

Leia waits until he can stand, until he's stopped feeling the chill in his bones, to tell him.

"With Luke Skywalker," Finn says, dumbly. "To be a Jedi."

His face openly says what Leia has secretly felt, so many times: an awestruck tremble at knowing your greatest friend is or will be the greatest of the Jedi, that ancient race of warriors. It is strange, to realize half your soul inhabits a world so distant from your own. Graciously, she gives him a few minutes to collect his thoughts, but he doesn't need them, because everything falls into place, perfect. Of course (the way the world bends for her, the blue of her lightsaber in the snow). Of course she is a Jedi.

"Where is she?"

Leia shakes her head and points to the map. "She is going to Ahch-To," she says, "but communication is hard on some of these planets. We lost contact a while ago. We have no way of knowing how near or far she is. And when she does get to Ahch-To, we do not know how long she will stay there."

"There's a lot you don't know," Finn remarks. He doesn't want to be rude, but he doesn't like it. Not knowing. 

"There is one thing." The General smiles, turning her grimness into softness, as if by magic. "I know she's safe."

"Because she's with your brother?"

Despite everything on her shoulders, Leia laughs, actually laughs. "No," she says, and her eyes look beyond. "Because the Force is with her."

Finn tries to see what she is seeing, feel what she is feeling. For a moment he does--he does know--but it is gone too quickly.

It is not enough.

-

In time Finn gets used to the not knowing. He gets used to life on the base, sort of--having people who smile at him and food that doesn't taste like wet sand and easy laughter and unshameful tears and music. (He never quite drops the feeling of quiet wonder that this, this is his now.)

And he never quite stops wondering, either. In the early hours of the morning he rises early to watch the sun. On late nights he leaves the brightness and noise of the canteen to stand beneath the stars. 

Looking out at them, he pictures his friend, the galaxy's champion, journeying uncharted planets and discovering new and beautiful things every day. He feels a twinge of loss, because he should be there, with Chewbacca and the Falcon and her, but he also feels, unequivocally, that this is her time, not his.

Then he asks the question, the one that's always at the back of his mind: 

where's Rey?